Epilogue
Five Years Later
The back of the earring would not slide into place.
Cordelia pinched the post between her thumb and forefinger and knew exactly where it should go, but she couldn’t line up her hands properly.
She turned toward the window for more light and tried again.
The back slipped out of her fingers and fell down onto the floorboards, rolled, and stopped against the wooden leg of the bed.
Remy picked it up. "Give me the other earring."
"I have it."
"Mom."
Cordelia opened her hand. Remy took the earring from her outstretched palm, stepped in close, and tilted her head. Cordelia had to lift her chin like a child at a collar. Her daughter's fingers were warm, and she had the first earring backing on in four seconds flat.
"The second table went up an hour ago, and, yes, it's weighted at the corners so it doesn’t lift up. Lavender's done a hundred of these, and you are not going out there." Remy fitted the other post through her earlobe, pressed the back on, and did not step away. "Hold still. You're shaking."
"I'm not shaking."
"Yes. You are."
Cordelia held still. This had been Remy's room, the summer she was six and would not sleep anywhere she could hear the water, and there was still a chip out of the sill where she had driven a toy car off it too roughly.
Down the slope through the window, the decorated chairs were in two short rows on the flat ground above the cliff drop, the water past them reflecting the sun, and somebody's small daughter was running in the grass with her arms fully stretched upward and waving as she bounded around in wide circles.
"What time did the boat people say they'd—?"
"Mom."
"It's just a question,” she said with mock indignation.
"It's not ‘just a question.’ You’re looking for something to do to stay busy." Remy licked her thumb and smoothed the baby hairs along Cordelia's hairline. "Everything is done. Lavender and I did most of it. Lauren did the rest and she's insufferable about it, so it's all perfect."
Remy stepped back and looked at her properly then. "These are mama's earrings," she said.
"Yes. It felt right." Cordelia looked at herself in the mirror, Eleanor’s earrings snug in her ears. A small crease formed in the middle of her brow, but she smoothed it away and looked back at Remy.
Remy turned Eleanor's ring once around her finger and let it go. "I had a whole thing I was going to say, but…"
"You don't have to say it if you don’t want to."
"I know I don't." She put her hands in her pockets.
"For about eight years, I used to come and see you and then drive home and think, well, she wasn't all here today either.
I got very used to it. The thing is, it stopped bothering me, which was the bad part.
" She stopped, and started again, and her voice had slowed down.
"But lately, in the last five years, you came back.
I just want you to know that I noticed."
Cordelia put her hand along the side of her daughter's face, which she had not done since Remy was in high school, and could not say one word.
"Okay," Remy said. "Okay, don't, Astoria will murder us both." She wiped under her own eye with the back of her wrist and held out her arm. "Come on. It's ten past."
The wind had slowed to a crisp breeze by the time they walked down the steps outside.
The light had turned golden across the water, reflecting the sunbeams, and to the south, the harbor sat small and white where the town was.
The whole headland smelled of salt and freshly cut grass and, from the porch behind them, of Lavender's famous cooking.
Cordelia took her daughter's arm. The gravel gave way to grass, and the walk was about forty feet. It took a long time to walk it, longer than Cordelia would have thought. Somewhere behind her a gull flew overhead and let out a shrill squawk as it flew toward the water. She could feel her heels sinking into the uneven ground and Remy's arm stabilizing her. The earrings were cold against her jaw as they jangled with each step. She was in her body for the entire time in a way she hadn’t been at Eleanor’s funeral, she realized wistfully.
She had told herself she would not be able to look anybody in the eyes today, but she looked at everyone, letting her gaze linger on each person before moving to the next.
Lillian Petersen sat at the front in a folding chair—eighty-seven, upright, and having already refused a blanket twice, waving off anyone who tried to coddle her.
Wren had said it would be the front row or nothing for Lillian, and Cordelia knew Wren wouldn’t accept “nothing” as an option.
Wren had made two phone calls about the flight and a third about the connection, just to make sure everything would arrive on time and Lillian wouldn’t get lost. Cordelia's father sat beside Lillian with his hands flat on his knees. He was eighty-nine and a professor of literature for forty years, who had told Cordelia at age twelve that her name came from a play he hoped she would leave alone and not sneakily read until she was older, when she would understand its implications. Cordelia had read it at twenty-two and found a new level of respect for her father. Lavender sat at the end of a row in a purple jacket with her sleeves pushed up. Diana Marten was beside her, out of police uniform and holding both their glasses. Miller was two chairs away from them. Veronica Kepling, who had kept the firm in good working order for fourteen years and didn’t break down crying once in all that time, regardless of whatever crisis was happening, was crying now with her chin up, and Lauren Pike sat beside her pretending to not notice and stared at her phone instead.
And in the second row, there were six people Cordelia had lost contact with after Eleanor had died, whom her daughter had spent five years bringing back one phone call at a time, sitting together in the good light with their programs in their laps.
Astoria was at the front wearing a navy pantsuit, holding a single folded page.
She had gotten herself ordained on a website in January.
And at the front of everything stood Wren.
Slate gray suit, no tie, her hair grown out an inch past what she used to keep it.
Her grandmother's watch on her left wrist with the leather gone even softer.
On her right wrist a thin gold bracelet, out of the last box, the one she had finally opened three years ago, sitting on the floor of the apartment with the tape in her hand.
She was already staring at Cordelia, a private smile for just her on her face.
When they got to the front, Remy put her mother's hand into Wren's, kissed her mother's cheek, and went and sat down in the first row.
Astoria smiled at them both. "Five years ago, I barged into this woman's kitchen at six in the morning and asked her what she wanted," she said. "And surprise, she didn't have an answer. Twenty-five years I've known her. That's the only time I've ever seen it happen."
Somebody in the front row laughed. Astoria didn't.
"She has one now, and I’m proud of her for figuring it out." Astoria looked at Wren. "Your turn."
Wren wasn’t holding cue cards or anything.
"I'm not really good at this part," she said, lightly laughing.
"So it's going to be short." She looked at Cordelia.
"You told me once that you couldn't promise me you'd stop disappearing inside yourself.
" She inhaled deeply, and Cordelia watched her body settle.
"I'm not asking you to promise. I'm telling you I promise to come and bring you back to the present. Every time."
Astoria let Wren’s vow sit for a moment. "Well, that was beautiful. Cordelia, your turn."
Cordelia had handwritten hers on Tuesday, on a piece of cardstock.
She had tucked it inside her inner tuxedo jacket pocket.
She pulled out the folded paper and opened it, reading through her vows.
She had chosen every word on it with intention, and all of it was true.
She could have read it to the end without her voice cracking, but she knew she had played it safe.
She folded the cardstock and put it back in her pocket.
"I built a company I thought would outlast me," Cordelia said. "I was good at it. I gave it thirty years, and I was fifty-three before it occurred to me that I had never once built a life I actually wanted to come home to."
Wren had gone completely still. Cordelia knew that reaction.
"Then you walked into my office," she said, "and had three of my problems solved before I'd finished saying them out loud.
" Nobody moved in the chairs, and Cordelia heard the waves breaking against the rocks.
"You roll a lemon under your palm before you cut it.
I have watched you do that in this house for five years, and I intend to watch you do it for the rest of my life. "
Wren's mouth moved and she got it under control. Then Cordelia felt her voice go. Cordelia stopped and let all of them watch her wait for it, and Wren's thumb moved once across her knuckles and stayed there.
"And I have not managed to disappear one time since," she said. "And believe me, I've tried."
Cordelia saw the laugh bubble up inside Wren.
It started low in her belly, and Cordelia watched it rise through her chest and throat then out of her mouth.
Wren clamped her hands over her mouth as her eyes widened, but she dropped her hands and continued laughing.
Cordelia stared at this marvelous, beautiful woman, and when she couldn’t stay apart from her a second longer, she stepped forward to close the distance and kissed her.
By seven, the wind had come back up off the water, and the sky had grown orange at the edges with patches of dirty-pink clouds.
There were large speakers out on the deck that Remy had carried from her apartment.
Astoria had her shoes off and was standing directly on the gravel, and her wife, Miller, was holding them.
Lavender's three-tiered cake stood on the second table with four slices cut out already.
Her father was balancing a plate on his knees and had been arguing with Lillian for an hour about a novel neither of them liked. Cordelia sat on the arm of his chair. He put his hand on her forearm and left it there and went on talking, and then he turned his head.
"You know what I always liked about your namesake?" he asked her.
"Don't."
"Her own father stood her up in front of the whole court and asked her to profess out loud how much she loved him. She refused to outrageously indulge him with flattery like her sisters, just for some land and an inheritance. She didn’t see love as transactional.
Instead, her desire was to express an honest love.
" He patted Cordelia's arm twice. "Like you, with your wife. "
Cordelia got up before he could say anything else and went to see about the cake. On the way back, she walked by Wren and Remy with their heads together over Remy's phone. Remy was asking her something about a work project.
"No," Wren said.
"It's twenty minutes."
"It is never twenty minutes." Wren took the phone from her, turned it face down on the tablecloth, and pushed it back across. "Ask Lauren on Monday. Go and dance with Astoria. She's showing off her moves, and nobody's watching her."
"You're supposed to be nicer to me today."
"I'm being extremely nice to you today."
Remy left. Somebody's chair went over in a gust. Then a second one, further along. Cordelia set her glass on the rail and went down the steps and started carrying them in off the wet gravel, two at a time, stacking them under the eaves next to her trowel.
She had four of them up when Wren came down the steps.
Wren had a glass and had not moved a table or cleared a plate or carried one single thing all evening.
She had stood on that deck for two hours and let other people run her own wedding.
It had taken her four years to be able to do that.
Wren put a hand flat on the back of Cordelia's neck, under her hair.
"Let me just get these two," Cordelia said.
Wren didn't answer and didn't take her hand away.
Cordelia stood there with a folding chair in each hand.
Above them, the music continued on, and her daughter's voice was threaded somewhere in it. Lillian said something loudly enough that Cordelia’s father laughed and started coughing.
The wind came up the garden and shifted the bean stakes.
Cordelia set both chairs down on the gravel and left them where they fell.
"There," Wren said.
"Don't be smug about it."
"I'm going to be a little smug."
They climbed up the steps together. Astoria had switched the music to something older and was dancing with Remy on the gravel, badly, and Veronica had taken command of the cake and was cutting it into pieces far too large for it to go around for everyone.
Cordelia stopped at the porch rail. Wren stopped beside her, and behind them, the party carried on without either of them in it.
The tide was pulling back under the headland, showing more of the rocks. When Wren put her hand on the rail, the gold from her wedding ring caught what was left of the light, and Cordelia looked at it for a moment and then out at the water.
"I'm here," she said.
Wren didn't turn her head. "Yeah, love, I know."
Behind them, somebody turned the music up and laughed. They stayed there, together, neither one of them going inside.